Tag: 250206

Double Rush

Lotus Land plays twice at Tupelo

By Michael Witthaus

[email protected]

A good tribute act walks a tightrope, capturing a sound without trying to fully reproduce it. It’s something that bassist Chris Nelson thinks about frequently. His band Lotus Land plays the challenging catalog of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame trio Rush, and Nelson knows that convincing proximity, not perfection, is a sane performer’s best target.

“It’s not like we’re trying to repaint the Mona Lisa, that’s almost a thankless task,” he said by phone recently. “We’ve gelled into performing this stuff with a certain degree of our personalities. Tone comes from the hands of the musician; you can’t help but sound a bit like yourself … you’re not trying to just be a robot.”

Fortunately, Nelson’s voice has a natural pitch that’s similar to that of Rush’s lead singer. Comments about the vocal resemblance have followed him for years. “I’d sing a Zeppelin tune and without fail people would say, ‘You sound so much like Geddy Lee,’” he said. “Here I thought I was doing a pretty good Robert Plant! But anyway, I’m a crazy Rush fan.”

His bandmates, guitarist Bob Chartrand and drummer Mark Dalton, started Lotus Land as a four-piece, parting ways with the original bass and keyboard players when they met Nelson and became a trio. Before playing out, they watched videos and practiced hard, aware that Rush’s fans would “be as understandably critical of us as they are loyal to the real thing.”

They approached their first gig fretting about the formula, prepared to bail if it failed. “I’m not going to put myself and my bandmates through the embarrassment — if it doesn’t work, that’s going to be it, because I know it’s a tall order,” Nelson recalled thinking at the time. “But it was well-received … and it kept snowballing.”

The band took its name from a line in “Freewill,” a song from Rush’s breakthrough 1980 album Permanent Waves. The late Neal Peart was inspired by Homer’s The Odyssey when he wrote it, according to interpretations. In the book Merely Players, Peart said the “Lotus-land” was “a metaphor for an idealized background, a land of milk and honey.”

Their website describes “an obsessive approach … that inevitably compels us to incorporate every authentic Rush nuance into whatever amazing tune of theirs we may be playing,” and on songs like “Spirit of the Radio” and “Tom Sawyer” they deliver on the promise with masterful musicianship that honors the original songs.

Nelson’s bonafides as a fan are undeniable — he’s seen them live almost 20 times, and Lotus Land performed at the 2012 RushCon in Toronto. The latter was a life-changing event for him — he met his future wife there. She was there from L.A., along with thousands of others who’d traveled there.

The meeting only sparked a friendship; both were with other partners at the time. “Two years later, our situations changed, and here we are married; so I can credit the band for that,” he said. “What’s cool is I got to tell Geddy Lee that, very briefly at a book signing, I had my 60 seconds like everybody else, and I got to tell him that.”

Asked to name his most enjoyable moments during Lotus Land’s set, Nelson responded, “I love that question. People have their favorite areas of the band and mine happens to be from Permanent Waves through Grace Under Pressure, so that’s also Moving Pictures and Signals. For my natural register as a vocalist, that feels right in my pocket, so that’s the kind of stuff I love to do.”

That said, there’s another song he loves not on any of those albums.

“I love playing ‘The Path,’” he said, adding a side note. “I never try to change my voice to sound like him at all. I hear some other tribute acts do, but I’ve got a higher, and similar register as Geddy, so I’m just going to sing in my natural voice. If it sounds like him at the end of the day, great. If not, it shouldn’t be too painful on people’s ears because I’m going for the right pitch … it should be close.”

Lotus Land

When: Friday, Feb. 7, and Saturday, Feb. 8, 8 p.m.
Where: Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry
Tickets: $42 and up at tupelohall.com

Featured Photo: Courtesy Photo.

The Music Roundup 25/02/06

By Michael Witthaus

[email protected]

• Reflective: A tribute to touring life, “The Road” from Rebecca Turmel is a fine depiction of the creative impulse that drives many performers. “I had no choice, the music chose me; and once it did, no going back,” she sings. Recorded in Nashville and released in the summer of 2023, the song includes guitar from longtime Jackson Browne Band member Val McCallum. Thursday, Feb. 6, 6 p.m., DOX on Winnisquam, 927 Laconia Road, Tilton; see rebeccaturmel.com.

• Inclusive: The musical nom de plume of singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Roz Raskin, Nova One performs with a band of identically dressed members — bob blond wigs, black dresses, tights and heels. The group is described as “lush, dreamy music that celebrates and centers vulnerability, self-love, self-expression, and queer futurity.” Their latest album is create myself. Friday, Feb. 7, 7 p.m., UNH Strafford Room, 83 Main St. (second floor), Durham, $10 non-students.

• Unscripted: After 25 years in the cast of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Brad Sherwood comes to town for a night of one-man improv comedy. He creates an experience that’s akin to jam bands like Phish, only funnier; no two shows are ever the same. Saturday, Feb. 8, at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester, $43 and up at palacetheatre.org.

• Escapist: Steer clear of big game hype by having an early brunch with music from Marc Apostolides. There’s nothing like eggs Benedict washed down with mimosas to help forget that the closest New England is getting to the Super Bowl this year is Tom Brady’s commentary. Apostolides is a veteran singer/songwriter who’s also known for producing the Sacred Sessions livestream. Sunday, Feb. 9, 11 a.m., Copper Door, 15 Leavy Drive, Bedford; theapostolidesproject.com.

• Camaraderie: In 1994, a brilliant collection of folk music was released, On A Winter’s Night. Organized by Christine Lavin, it was a showcase of the genre’s finest performers. Among the featured artists were Patty Larkin, Cliff Eberhardt, John Gorka and Lucy Kaplansky. The four are back by popular demand for an in the round song pull and collaborations. Wednesday, Feb. 12, 7:30 p.m., Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua, $29 and up at etix.com.

Ladies and Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music (TV MA)

Questlove codirects Ladies and Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music, a very Questlove-y documentary about the role of music in Saturday Night Live throughout the decades.

And by “Questlove-y” I mean wonderfully insightful about the music, not afraid of addressing controversy and exquisitely edited — see also his 2021 doc Summer of Soul (… Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised). Get a taste of what you’re in for with the six-ish-minute intro, which has been floating around online featuring a mashup of interviews and performances from 50 years of the show’s history. The doc proper keeps the energy going, with a look at the technical aspects of how a performer approaches an SNL appearance, the role that music has had in the show and some of the more memorable performances including the “riot” that wasn’t during a performance by punk band Fear, Sinéad O’Connor’s protest against the Catholic Church, Rage Against the Machine’s tumultuous appearance (as told by Tom Morello, a guy with a fair amount of insight into the music history presented here as well), Ashlee Simpson’s technical difficulties and more. Talking heads from Lorne Michaels, Justin Timberlake, Andy Samberg, Jimmy Fallon, Jack White and others don’t slow things down and help to give both context and, especially from the behind-the-scenes crew, some nice dirt on how the show and the musical elements come together. A must watch for fans of SNL, Questlove and music in general. A Streaming on Peacock and, like, however else you get your NBC. Summer of Soul, which is also awesome, is available on Hulu/Disney+, Tubi and for purchase.

Sing Sing (R)

Colman Domingo is my pick of the five actors nominated for a Lead Actor Oscar this year for his role in Sing Sing, a feature film based on the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts program at Sing Sing Correctional Facility.

Domingo, Paul Raci and Sean San Jose act alongside formerly incarcerated men who participated in the program and are here playing, more or less, themselves. These men clearly know how to draw from their experiences to present an entirely raw wallop of emotion that radiates out from them even when all they’re doing is just standing there. Domingo plays John, an author and one-time student at the Fame high school, who helped to found the theater program at Sing Sing. John says he has proof that he didn’t commit the crime he was convicted of and is hopeful that an upcoming hearing will lead to his release. Perhaps it’s his knowledge of his innocence and his belief that eventually he will be able to present his case to someone who will accept and believe his evidence that keeps him relatively optimistic. He writes plays, he helps scout new members for the program’s productions and he seems to work hard to hold up the men for whom the program is something of a life raft.

Divine Eye (Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, a real-life program alum) is a new member who goes through the process of breaking down his prison defenses in order to perform in productions as varied as Shakespeare and a new comedy written by the group’s director Brent (Raci) that includes time travel, cowboys and gladiators. The tough-guy-ness that keeps them alive (and may have also brought them to the prison in the first place) is chipped away and the theater program becomes a place where they can all become vulnerable.

The actors here — both the RTA guys and the civilian actors — get to the heartbreak of the men’s situation (which includes the sense that, had they had an outlet like this for their emotions before they committed crimes or fell into a life of violence, they might not have made the choices that they did). Domingo in particular is excellent as the guy who believes in what he’s doing, has hope for the future, can find joy in the moment — until he can’t. The movie manages to mix moments of levity, moments of “let’s put on a show” goofiness and moments of devastation in a fully captivating way. A Available for rent and purchase.

You’re Cordially Invited (R)

The overly involved father of a bride and pushy sister of another bride find themselves sharing a double booked wedding venue in You’re Cordially Invited.

A single dad since his wife died, Jim (Will Ferrell) wants recent college graduate daughter Jenni’s (Geraldine Viswanathan) special day to be perfect, even if he thinks she’s way too young to marry Oliver (Stony Blyden). Meanwhile, Margot (Reese Witherspoon), a reality TV producer wants her baby sister Neve (Meredith Hagner) to have her dream wedding to Dixon (Jimmy Tatro), an Army National Guard medic and exotic dancer. Both Jim and Margot book the same weekend at a small inn, which can really only do one wedding at a time, on Palmetto Island in Georgia. Because Margot and Neve eventually feel bad for Jenni, they offer to share the hotel, making everything a little crappier for everyone. When slights trigger mutual animosity, both Jim and Margo turn to various degrees of sabotage.

This is an intensely stupid movie — an intensely stupid movie that I had to pause at one point because I choke-laughed so hard I thought I might need medical help. The movie also features a very dumb but enjoyable bit with an alligator, and “Islands in the Stream” is used twice for solid comic effect (as is Peyton Manning). To some degree I feel like the whole thrill here is watching Ferrell and Witherspoon play their standard characters — kooky and tightly wound, respectively — but with the “improbable nuttiness” turned up to 11 and a whole lot more swearing. That sounds hacky, and maybe it is hacky, but they win, they got me. Just ignore the 11th-hour attempt at rom-com-ery; the movie doesn’t seem to think much of it either. B Streaming on Prime Video.

Featured Image: Ladies and Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music (TV MA)

All the Water in the World, by Eiren Caffall


All the Water in the World, by Eiren Caffall (St. Martin’s Press, 294 pages)

“Storms always came. They took things,” the young narrator of All the Water in the World says matter-of-factly, explaining what life was like before melting polar ice caps drowned New York City.

But in the early days of the climate apocalypse, the girl named Nonie explains, there was always a sense that things could be fixed, that the world could adjust to a new reality without cars, reliable electricity, airplanes, bananas — whatever disappeared next.

“Every year, the storms were bigger — moving the ocean up into the streets” and eventually moving Nonie and her family onto the roof of the American Museum of Natural History, where her parents had worked before the world shut down.

That living arrangement was safe until it wasn’t, when a “hypercane” — a monstrous hurricane with winds up to 200 mph — made even a rooftop in Manhattan unsafe, and Nonie and her people had to relocate even though it seemed that the whole world was under water. It wasn’t just their few belongings that they had to worry about, but the whole of history that had been contained within the museum and has now been painstakingly described in a handwritten logbook for future generations, if they exist.

Eiren Caffail’s debut novel was inspired by actual events: the struggle to save museum collections from the devastation of war.

During the siege of Leningrad in the second World War, Caffail writes, curators stayed in the Hermitage museum, eating paste to stay alive and caring for the art. “They belonged to the art and the art belonged to them and it was a sacred duty. But so was the vision of what it would be one day when the siege was over and the windows repaired and the museum alive again for everyone, for the world that mattered, the one they wanted.”

In All the Water in the World, Nonie’s parents work to save what they can of the museum’s collections, wrapping and hiding artifacts, hoping that they will one day again be treasured and displayed. Nonie herself contributes, making a “water logbook” and writing descriptions of the storms as they get bigger and bolder.

Unlike her sister, Bix, who is terrified of water, Nonie has “water love,” a gift from her mother, now dead. And so it’s Nonie who has to comfort Box as they climb into a birchbark canoe, once part of an exhibit of an indigenous civilization and now their only means of transportation as the water rises in the museum.

Four people — the sisters, their father and an entomologist from the museum — launch the canoe in terrifying conditions hoping to follow the Hudson River to a family farm they know used to exist to the north. Their journey at times is Walking Dead-esque — “Sometimes what looks like shelter is only menace,” Caffall writes — except the horror comes from the water, not zombies. Through it all, Caffall’s prose is gorgeous:

“The new sea coursed with lost things. Debris swirled and rose in the water — headphones, water bottles, flotillas of paper, broken birds, photographs. In the mud of the Park after a storm, photographs surfaced, bleached and peeling, evidence of lives in The World As It Was, lives that included trips in planes, cake with candles, people in fresh clothing with white teeth and no idea what was coming, a child on a three-wheeled bicycle, a newborn screaming with a red face faded pink, a man holding it, on the edge of laughter, eyes slapped wide, joy pouring out of his smiling mouth.”

As they progress through New England, the group meets sickness and death and new people, with more about the past revealed in flashbacks. In this landscape of sorrow and misery, it is an accomplishment for Caffall to close the story in a way that doesn’t end with utter destruction, like the movie Don’t Look Up. But she does so, like the parents kept Nonie and Bix going: “with hope thrown hard at the darkness.”

Caffall has published one other book, a memoir called The Mourner’s Bestiary, which weaves together her family’s struggle with a genetic kidney disease and the plight of animals affected by ecological change in the Gulf of Maine and the Long Island Sound. Dystopian climate fiction is all the rage right now, but Caffall brings a thoughtful voice to the genre and is writing books that have value as books and not just as storylines for disaster movies.

The only part that didn’t work for me were the occasional excerpts from Nonie’s logbook, which, frankly, just aren’t that interesting, compared to the rest of the narrative, because the writer is 13. (Example: “Keller told me that ‘nor’easter isn’t a real weather word, and that at some point, there were so many storms that you could hardly call anything nor’easters anymore.”)

Caffall said it took her 11 years to write this book, and it shows. While some readers might wish for more of a disaster-movie plot, it was clearly not her intent to write that kind of a book. It’s not so much a climate novel as it is a climate meditation that just happens to have a submerged Empire State Building in it. B+ —Jennifer Graham

Featured Image: All the Water in the World, by Eiren Caffall

Album Reviews 25/02/06

Frank Meyer, Living Between The Lines (Kitten Robot Records)

Back in June of last year I’d talked in this space about former New York Dolls guitarist Steve Conte, whose Concrete Jangle LP was a really pleasant surprise, a decidedly ’80s post-punk exercise that was full of really filthy guitar work and awash in hooks. Age and elite-level experience will bring that sort of pedigree to an artist, as it did to this guy, whose resume includes stints with Wayne Kramer from MC5, former New York Dolls utility player Sylvain Sylvain, and Iggy & the Stooges guitarist James Williamson. Like Conte, Meyer has spent so much time as a second banana that he hasn’t gotten around to releasing his own stuff; in fact this is his first solo album, and what a great one it is. It’s a gamma ray blast of shredding, glam, Iggy, Kiss, and, well, early Bon Jovi, a ferocious uncorking of ’70s-’90s testosterone that’s (all together now) the sort of thing the current dystopian zeitgeist needs. Absolutely nothing bad here. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

G. Himsel, Songs of Doubt & Despair (Sedan Is Real Records)

You probably won’t remember this, but exactly three years ago I wrote up Manchester, N.H., folk revivalists Bird Friend, which featured this fellow and his girlfriend Carson Kennedy trying out some rather adventurous Woody Guthrie-steeped stuff. What made it seriously notable was the liberal use of random sound samples that evoked 1930s train stations, rainstorms, things like that. He’s up in Portsmouth, N.H., now, more pessimistic than he was before, still obsessed with the sound of the Dust Bowl era and such; these tunes range from the “gospel and old-country balladry of the 1800s to the coffee shop folk of 1950s New York,” meant as harbingers of what climate change is bringing us all in the far future (and the present day, as in the case of areas of Pakistan where wet bulb temperatures can already suffocate a person to death within a couple of hours, just sayin’). The songs were recorded at his kitchen table, not that it shows; this time he’s more focused on antiquities than jazzing them up with natural sound effects, his own missives to a species in deep peril. Other than that it’s an upbeat record of course, don’t get me wrong. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

Playlist

• A brand new pile of CDs will be dumped on humanity this Friday, Feb. 7, the date that marks the 61st anniversary of The Beatles’ British Invasion, when the Fab Four landed in New York City for their first U.S. concerts! Two nights later, Beatlemania stormed America, when their performance on the Ed Sullivan show was “watched by 73 million viewers” (mostly it was bots run by the record company of course). Now, if you were age, say, 60 back then, you were confused and not sure what to make of all the hubbub, because the music of your youth was made in the 1920s and 1930s, by people like Al Jolson, the Billy Hays Orchestra and all the other bands that recorded their music using “a single microphone, a towering 6-foot amplifier rack, and a live record-cutting lathe, powered by a weight-driven pulley system of clockwork gears.” In other words, it was like a glorified grandfather clock that only worked for a short time: The musicians had roughly three minutes in which to record a song directly to disc, hopefully without any foul-ups, before the weight hit the floor. Of course, The Beatles had modern analog technology and saved us from all that cringe by recording three-minute lovey-dovey songs that featured Chuck Berry guitars being played aggressively, sort of like Metallica would have if they hadn’t all been playpen-dwelling infants at the time, and voila, rock ’n’ roll had arrived to change the world! That brings us to the here and now, after however many years of advancement in recording techniques, with U.K.-based post-punk band Squid, whose new concept-ish album, Cowards, cleverly eschews lovey-dovey Al Jolson piffle and focuses instead on an obscure dystopian Splatterpunk sci-fi novel, about institutionalized wide-scale cannibalism, how rock ’n’ roll can you get! The novel in question, Tender Is The Flesh, was panned by one Redditor as being “the worst horror book I’ve ever read by far,” but did that stop the bandleader guy from Squid? Nope, the single is titled “Crispy Skin,” and it sounds like Devo doing a joke version of a speed-rockin’ Hall & Oates song, like “Maneater,” but really stupid and pointless, doesn’t that sound gooood? Pitchfork Media thinks so, of course!

• Krept & Konan is a British hip-hop group whose haters are starting to pile up at the gates. Most of those are incensed over the fact their new album, Young Kingz 2, caters to American tastes, which is definitely true of the new single, “Low Vibrations,” what with its uneventful trappy beat and boring flow. Naturally, the haters aren’t as angry about the yawn-inducing music as they are triggered by the fact that the crew bought into a supermarket chain and are presenting it as a Black-owned business when it’s actually owned by another minority, which we won’t get into here because who even cares about silly beefs anymore.

• You remember Boston-based progressive-metal band Dream Theater, right? Well, don’t look at me, because I can’t erase those memories, but their new one, Parasomnia, is here! “Midnight Messiah” is basic Slayer-tinted epic-metal oatmeal, and ha ha, the video for the tune has a guy in the audience who looks like the skinny blond guy from the X-Files’ Lone Gunmen! This column is writing itself these days, fam!

• Lastly and definitely leastly, it’s Guided by Voices, the band led by Dayton, Ohio’s pride and joy, Robert Pollard, who just can’t stop making albums! Universe Room, his 41st album, features “Fly Religion,” whose first part is decent, but then he adds some other silly parts and it sort of flops like a failed Teardrop Explodes experiment. —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Photo: Frank Meyer, Living Between The Lines (Kitten Robot Records) and G. Himsel, Songs of Doubt & Despair (Sedan Is Real Records)

Nashville Hot ‘Chicken’

By John Fladd

[email protected]

2-3 packages frozen plant-based “chick’n”patties (8 to 12 patties)

Vegetable oil for frying

Dredging flour:

4 cups (560 g) all-purpose flour

1 Tablespoon cayenne pepper

1 Tablespoon paprika – I like smoked paprika

1 Tablespoon kosher or coarse sea salt

1 Tablespoon fresh-ground black pepper

Coating liquid:

2 cups (475 g) buttermilk

¼ cup (65 g) hot sauce – I like to use a green jalapeño sauce; it’s not scorchingly hot, but it is delicious

2 eggs

1 Tablespoon kosher or coarse sea salt

Sauce:

½ cup (99 g) hot frying oil

¼ cup (half a stick) butter

2 Tablespoon cayenne pepper

3 Tablespoon brown sugar

1 teaspoon each of garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, black pepper, and taco seasoning

1½ teaspoons kosher or coarse sea salt

Defrost the frozen “chicken” patties in the microwave, about three minutes at high power. Set them aside.

Set up a dredging station, with the dredging flower in a large bowl, and the coating liquid in a cake tin or a pie pan. In two separate bowls, put the half-stick of butter, and the dry ingredients for the sauce.

Pour approximately 2 inches of vegetable oil in a saucepan or an electric fry pan, and heat it to 350°F.

Preparing all the elements for a dish before actually cooking it is called “mise en place.” Restaurant cooks call it “mise.” Setting up all your frying elements ahead of time will make this process relatively simple. Not setting it up will lead to chaos and frustration and running around screaming in a hot oil environment.

When your oil has come almost up to temperature, use a pair of kitchen tongs to drop one of the “chicken” patties in the seasoned flour. Completely coat it, then shake most of the loose flour from it, then give it a quick bath in the hot sauce-buttermilk mixture, then return it to the flour. Use the tongs to completely cover it, and let it sit there, buried in flour, until the oil hits 350°F.

Shake most of the loose flour off the patty with your tongs, then gently drop it into the hot oil. Fry it until both sides are gently browned, three and a half to four minutes. Use a second pair of kitchen tongs to transfer it to brown paper from a grocery bag to drain. While it cooks, prepare the next “chicken” patty, and leave it buried in flour until it is ready to go into the oil in its turn.

Fry all the patties in this way, then remove the frying vessel from heat.

Ladle ½ cup of the used frying oil on top of the half stick of butter, and stir it until it melts. (Please don’t do this in a plastic bowl. Remember the screaming and chaos mentioned above? You will definitely experience that if your hot oil melts a hole in your bowl.) Whisk in the rest of the sauce ingredients. This sauce will want to separate, so make certain you stir it every time you spoon it onto a fried “chicken” patty.

If you’re a garnish kind of person, garnish with some cilantro.

So, is this authentic Nashville Hot Chicken? Not really, but it’s a good approximation of it. You’ll get a spicy and crispy coating on a chewy, not-un-chickenlike armature, covered with a sweet, spicy sauce. If not authentic, it is delicious, and as spicy as you choose to take it. If you were to bring a platter of these to, say, a viewing party for a major sporting event, you could probably expect a certain amount of ribbing at the start, but by the second set of commercials, someone else is guaranteed to try the sauce, then a patty with the sauce. Make sure you’ve set a couple aside for yourself, because the rest will be gone by half time.

Also — not for nothing — these go extremely well with beer.

FNashville Hot ‘Chicken’. Photo by John Fladd.

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